


and also with you

by kenopsia (indie)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (not a source of stress), Christianity, Easter, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-05-29 15:06:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6381160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indie/pseuds/kenopsia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You gave him a cuddle?” Jack says. </p><p>“You didn't see him,” Shitty says, defensive. “He was like a shelter dog commercial. The day I don't respond to that kind of sadness, you can assume I'm fucking dead.” </p><p>Jack is staring at Shitty, mouth parted, and Shitty meets his gaze resolutely. “You could go talk to your boy if you’re so worried, <i>captain</i>,” he says, infusing his title with a measure of implication, like it might be Jack’s responsibility to the team to check to make sure Bitty is handling his problems in an emotionally healthy way, as if Jack isn’t the least qualified person for the role he knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sevenimpossiblethings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenimpossiblethings/gifts).



> I missed East Coast Easter by nine minutes, but the West Coast still has a few hours to enjoy the first half of this Easter fic. (For Sevenimpossiblethings, who had a lot of the thoughts about Jack and Bitty and church with me, and without whom this fic wouldn't exist.)

“— because Bitty feels like shit, I assume.”

Jack hadn't been listening, particularly, but now Shitty has his full attention. Jack closes his book, a thick tome about Jeanne MancE with weak binding. “What are you talking about?”

Shitty gives a two shouldered shrug. “You didn't notice? He's been in a sulk since, I don't know, Wednesday?”

“He was baking yesterday.” Jack says, frowning.

“Yeah, but he's not happy about it. He’s baking sadness pies like a little refugee.”

Jack doesn't question Shitty’s handle on emotional nuance. It's one of the things that keeps the machine of their friendship well-oiled. “Well. What’s he upset about?”

“I don’t know, man,” Shitty says. “I gave him a two-hour cuddle, but he didn’t say anything. I can only assume the obvious.”

Now Jack feels a bit like an ass, because there’s an explanation so obvious that Shitty is literally calling it _the obvious,_ and he has no clue what that is. Shitty doesn’t explain, though.

“You gave him a cuddle?” Jack says.

“You didn't see him,” Shitty says, defensive. “He was like a shelter dog commercial. The day I don't respond to that kind of sadness, you can assume I'm fucking dead.”

Jack is staring at Shitty, mouth parted, and Shitty meets his gaze resolutely. “You could go talk to your boy if you’re so worried, _captain_ ,” he says, infusing his title with a measure of implication, like it might be Jack’s responsibility to the team to check to make sure Bitty is handling his problems in an emotionally healthy way, as if Jack isn’t the least qualified person for the role he knows.

Jack had a hot pocket half an hour ago, but he must not have waited long enough to eat it, because suddenly he realizes that his throat feel funny; it’s hard to swallow. “Alright.”

*

He’d been in a hurry yesterday. On thursday he’s got a Civ class that he does massive amounts of reading for, and he’d stumbled through the house with his textbook, only briefly noting the Bitty was standing barefoot in the kitchen, and that the air when he went through it was both warm and mouthwatering. It was generally the sign of a well-running Haus. They had achieved homeostasis and, apparently, it smelled like banana bread.

Only, this time Jack’s tried-and-true system of figuring out what a given cue means and assuming it always applies has failed him, because Bitty had been making, what, misery snacks?

He’d been ready to lounge about all day for the three day weekend, but now that Shitty’s dropped the knowledge that Bitty is having some sort of emotional upheaval on him (like a fucking inbred cat, leaving dead shit on his doorstep) he’s pretty sure he’s going to do some investigating.

Of course, when it comes to Bitty, investigating usually only involves striking up a casual conversation and letting the resultant flow wash over him until he knows what's bothering him.

This obviously is not going to be the case today, if Shitty doesn't know, and if Shitty had _given him a cuddle_ in the hopes of finding out.

He doesn't have to search for him long, because when he wasn't in the kitchen, pouring his sorrows into Betsey, Jack had headed to the rink.

He'd figured there were two options, and that was that he’d find Bitty, and Bitty would be found, or that he wouldn't find Bitty, and he could take a lap to clear his head before the next place he looked.

He's not sure which he wants more, but he doesn't really have a choice.

He is aware of Bitty from the moment he crosses the rink threshold, because he walks into a wall of sound, so loud he can hardly hear himself think.

He finds himself a seat in the bleachers, watching intently from beneath his ball cap as Bitty darts fast and furious circles, carving up the ice with a manic speed, one wrist locked in the opposite hand behind him. Bitty’s music, pouring through the speakers like a heavy rain, isn’t his usual fair. There is no bass, just layers of piano music, dark and triumphant and a little melancholy in turns. Jack isn’t exactly sure what he’s seeing.

He’s got the day off, though, nowhere to be but here, and he puts his elbows on his knees. Bitty is graceful, he knows, but he rarely gets to see him like this, with the ice to himself, unselfconscious and not trying to prove himself, simply making sharp turns and keeping an unreal speed. He notices almost immediately that Bitty isn’t in his hockey skates.

He’s seen him throw in a few moves, too, but here Bitty has the ice to himself, gets to throw himself into the air over and over again with nothing to distract him. He’s machine precise, like something made out of clockwork cogs but infinitely faster. Jack half wants to slow clap it out for him.

It’s not that Bitty isn’t a great player, getting better all the time and really coming into his own now that he’s not ducking with anxiety every time someone looms at him, but Jack’s never realized how much Bitty gave up, in terms of skill and status, to cross over from figure skating, which he’s frankly, built for, to hockey, where he works his ass off to make up for all the ways he comes at it with a disadvantage.

Jack loses half an hour just staring.

*

When he gets off the ice, he doesn’t look surprised to see Jack. “Hey Jack,” he says, breezing past him. “The ice is all yours.”

If Jack hadn’t already been on the alert for it, he could have easily let Bitty walk away, because nothing about him sends off alarm bells in Jack’s head.

And hey, people get over things all the time. Not everyone is him, letting doubt and anxiety stew until they have a breakdown under the pressure… Jack almost lets him pass.

“Bittle,” he says instead, not so much following him out of the rink as dogging his heels. “I was looking for you, actually.”

“Oh,” Bitty says, mouth round. “Well, I was just headed back to the Haus to get cleaned up. I figured I’d put the extra day to good use and get some ice time.”

Jack nods at him approvingly, putting a clumsy hand on his shoulder. “The, ah, music is a little different though.”

Bitty raises his eyebrows at him, cheeks spreading red. “Well. I just put on… Anyways, it doesn’t really matter.”

Jack keeps following him while he goes into the booth and unplugs his music. Jack watches him unplug his ipod — an older generation, click wheel and a hundred and sixty gigs — when the screen lights up. _You Raise Me Up — E. Bittle._

“That,” Jack says, and then stops. “That’s cool,” is the only thing he can think of, because he’s an asshole, clearly not fit for friendship. This was clearly a bad idea. He’s not sure why he thought he was up for this when even Shitty couldn’t get to the bottom of Bitty’s discomfort.

Bitty blows out a long breath. It actually ruffles the damp hair falling down his forehead. He pockets his ipod, and starts making his way out the front doors of the rink. “There’s no need to be facetious, Jack.”

Jack shoves his hands in his pocket. “I wasn’t.” he says. People accuse him of being emotionless, flat, he’s heard it all, from teachers to exes to Lyle Woodcraft, an ESPN announcer who occasionally seems to be trying out for the role of Jack’s arch-nemesis. He’s not stupid; he knows he screws this kind of thing up. He tries again: “I didn’t know you played piano.”

Bitty gives a shrug. “I mean, normally, I don’t, but this weekend… I usually would be.”

“This weekend?” Jack asks. He can feel his eyebrows drawing towards each other.

Bitty looks like he’s not sure if Jack is joking. He’s not. “We have today off, mister,” he says, and now he almost looks wistful, “because of Easter.”

Jack feels hollowed out with surprise. “For church,” he says. There it is. The obvious. Shitty is going to lose it when Jack tells him that he got to the bottom of the case in roughly five minutes of conversation with Bitty.

Bitty nods at him, chin dimpling with emotion, and it’s finally surface-clear that Bitty’s a hundred and thirty pounds of thunderstorm. This is why he doesn’t tend to doubt Shitty — his track record as an emotional PI is pretty much flawless. Later, he knows he’ll tell him that he was right — that Bitty was caught in his own thoughts because of the religious holiday. He’s been to church, but his own parents aren’t particularly religious, so he never had to deal with any of that mess.

Jack isn’t the best at this, but he and Bitty are friends, and Bitty consistently goes out on limbs to reach out to them. Jack searches for a minute until he finds the right thing to say. “If they don’t accept you, fuck them.”

Bitty looks up at him so fast he instantly clasps his hand down on the back of his neck, probably to press against the self-induced whiplash. “What — no. I can’t believe you said that.”

“Sorry,” Jack says, and then stops, saving himself from further foot in mouth incidences by foolproof plan of complete silence.

“It’s okay. You just surprised me; it’s not like that. I just can’t really afford to fly down for one weekend this year, especially so close to the end of the year and it’s just. Hard. It’s the best holiday and I’m not going to be home for it, and I just hate to be anywhere but my home church on Easter.”

Of all the things Jack woke up expecting, Bitty doing melancholy laps because he’s going to miss a sunday morning church service would not have cracked the top fifty, ever.

“Wait, what?”

*

“You missed the exit,” Bitty says, frowning as Jack zips past the exit he _would_ have turned off on, had he been telling Bitty the truth. Bitty, who was a great navigator, if a little over-zealous at times, had definitely pointed out the upcoming turn in plenty of time for Jack to make it.

“No, I didn’t.”

Bitty holds up his phone so Jack can see it _recalculating_ to make up for his mistake. “Google maps don’t lie, Jack.”

“We’re not going to the zoo,” Jack says. “We’re going to take I-95 all the way down to Georgia. We can get there in sixteen hours.”

“A thousand miles,” Bitty says, like he’s unsure, like he wants to find fault with Jack’s plan, but Jack looks down and catches a glimpse of his twitching hands, like he’s too excited to keep them still. He looks like he’s doing his due diligence. “On I-95. At the beginning of a three day weekend.”

“So there’ll be a little traffic,” Jack shrugs, with more confidence than he feels. What’s the worst that could happen? Spending a day on the road to get Bitty home for a weekend that, for some reason, is important to him. He’s been on longer road trips for friends who didn’t look half as miserable. “We’ll still get there by saturday if we take turns driving.”

He’d told Bitty that he’d wanted to take him out for the day to distract him from the fact that he wasn’t going to make it home this weekend, for the first time ever, and he’d told him to grab a nice outfit, because they’d have dinner in the city.

Bitty looks completely startled, but also touched. His eyes are big and bright and Jack has to tear his gaze away from him to look back on the road.

“That you —” he starts to say, before his phone cuts him off, using an obnoxious voice to let him know that he should take the next available opportunity to make a U-turn if they want to get to the zoo. Bitty turns off his navigation with a fond expression. “Hush, honey. There’s been a change of plans.”


	2. Chapter 2

The change in Bitty is almost instantaneous. His posture straightens up as he sits up in Jack’s passenger seat, pulling his legs underneath himself to sit cross-legged. 

“You did a very sneaky thing, Jack,” Bitty says. 

Jack smiles a little ruefully. “I’ve seen you pack. We didn’t have a week for you to sort through your sock drawer.” 

“You could have given me enough notice to get my skincare supplies,” Bitty says. “And —” 

“I made sure you got your chargers,” Jack says, sulking a bit. “And I had Shitty put your backpack in the car.”

“I know,” Bitty says with a grin and an absent touch to his own hair. “You are a gracious overlord. Plus, being a thousand miles from your bathroom seems like as good a reason as any to buy new pomade.”

“That’s the spirit,” Jack says. 

Bitty has his phone out, and Jack catches a glimpse of the blue bird before he looks back at the road. “Do your followers really need to know that you’re going to get new hair shit, Bittle?” 

“They require every detail,” Bitty says, tapping with both thumbs. Jack imagines what he’s telling them. He’s been tempted before to find Bitty on twitter, because the part of him that knows the whole situation is a PR nightmare just waiting to happen, and in a morbid way he just wants to know, but he always shies away from it. It seems private, like his video blog. Like a diary he lets the whole internet read. 

Jack doesn’t know what he tweets about, but he’s smiling a little bit with the left corner of his mouth, which is good enough for Jack. 

*

On Wednesday they’d had an evening practice that went late because they didn’t have one scheduled over the long weekend, and after, Jack’s eyes had been too tired to focus, and the noise of the house had clawed at his nerves, so he’d gone on a long drive with a book on CD to keep him company. 

When he and Bitty got into the car, he tucked it into the visor out of courtesy. Now, the radio rasps on low, a country station he likes, and he can visibly see Bitty trying not to chirp him. 

Jack turns it up just to watch him sit on his own hands in an effort to physically restrain himself and Jack is so amused that he begins singing along. Bitty looks equal parts interested and horrified. 

*

Jack doesn’t typically make rash decisions. He’s learned through very painful trial and error that nothing makes his anxiety spike like whims. So far, though, there’s been no regret. Not even when he finally has mercy on Bitty and tells him he can plug his iPod into his auxiliary port and they spend half an hour listening to one long tedious song that Bitty insists is actually ten songs.

Bitty can’t believe he’d say something so rude about Cascada’s “ _ best album _ ” and Jack has to do his best not to snort through his nose. 

Jack pretends like he can’t hear him as he hits scan, lets the radio cycle. Bitty knows every top 40 hit, and he jumps right in and sings along in snatches of choruses, thumps along to the bassline. It’s like a kaleidoscope of a song and Jack can feel his own pulse, steady in his wrists and he keeps a loose grip on the wheel. 

Jack saw Bitty cutting punishing circles, lap after lap, under the weight of his own gospel music, shaking the rink like a nightclub, and he’d leapt to a decision. It had been like an engine sparking to life, for him to see Bitty’s face, and realize that Bitty doesn’t have a car and that he’d like to be home and Jack’s brain hadn’t even stopped to mull it over for five minutes before he’d calculated the lie he would tell Bitty to get him in his own vehicle. 

There are nerves, now, sure as fuck, but he hasn’t had a nervous breakdown about his own life choices yet, so, there’s that. Eventually he lets Bitty plug his ipod back in, and Bitty is careful to find a better balance, plays a song or two with a story between his high octane pop music, there are even a few he likes tucked in there, not Bitty’s regular shower listening, and Jack tries not to presume, in general, but he feels softly confident thinking that maybe they’re for him, like Bitty keeps three or four songs in there just for him.

“I’ve never heard that come out of your speakers before,” Jack points out, after weighing the comment in his mouth for the length of  _ Ring of Fire. _

“Not like I can put it on shuffle,” Bitty says, furiously tapping away.

“No?” Jack frowns. “Why not?”

“Well. You heard it at the rink. I’ve got a lot of personal stuff. If I’m hooked up to speakers or in the shower, it’s always on a playlist.”

Hearing Bitty describe some of his songs as  _ personal stuff  _ does something interesting to Jack’s stomach. He feels vaguely guilty, even though that doesn’t make sense. “I’m sorry I didn’t — that you got your ice time interrupted.”

“Goodness gracious, Jack. I didn’t mean it like that,” Bitty says, touching his own throat like a startled maiden. It’s ridiculous and quintessentially Bitty. “I’m glad you interrupted my ice time. You’re basically doin’ me the biggest favor of my adult life so far.”

Jack doesn’t know how to respond to that except to mumble, “It’s nothing, not a big deal.” He almost adds,  _ I would have done it for anyone on the team,  _ but shoves that down. He’s not sure why he wants to minimize it.

“Well. I appreciate it a whole bunch, Jack.”

*

The shift in temperature is gradual. Jack is a frog in a pot — he hardly notices until he feels stifled, abruptly sweaty across the back of his neck as they travel down the coast. “Bitty,” he says, when it hits him. The worst part is, it’s already  _ dark. _ “This isn’t air.”

“I know,” Bitty says, poking out his lower lip and looking suddenly pitiful. “It’s soup.”

“I get it now,” Jack says.

“What do you get?”

“When you hit five four and decided to stop growing. Minimizing surface area.”

Bitty stretches his legs out in front of himself, probably to remind Jack not to short-change him. Bitty knows he will just sound petty to quibble with the two inches he’d shorted him. “I don’t know that I decided to stop,” Bitty says, “as much as no one answered my desperate prayers, for, you know, just a few more.”

Jack is once again confronted with the unexpected. He squints at Bitty, briefly. “You turned out alright.”

It takes him until they cross over the state line,  _ Welcome to Georgia,  _ for Jack to work up the courage to ask about it. Bitty is driving at that point, and they’re both exhausted and cramped from being cooped up all day, but Bitty’s obviously been hit with a second wind, exhilarated to be so close to home.

“Bitty,” he says, faltering, “your parents, do they know that...”

“About me bein’... oh. Well. You should probably mention it about as often as you usually do?” Bitty’s voice is mild, a little amused, and his accent is more prominent now that Jack has ever heard it, like proximity has unlocked Bitty’s mouth.

He knows he’s being mildly rebuffed, because as far as Jack can remember, they’ve never brought it up between the two of them, but if he’s about to meet Bitty’s folks, he thinks it would be helpful to know what to expect. “Meaning, you’re not out?”

Bitty does a full body wiggle that Jack interprets as a shrug with the volume turned up. “I don’t know.”

Jack doesn’t know how you could  _ not know.  _ His own coming out was hardly a deliberate decision, but there’d been a clear distinction about the timeline of his life, an easy lynchpin to separate  _ my dad doesn’t know  _ and  _ my dad definitely wishes he didn’t know.  _ Jack swallows his own history down, says, “okay.”

*

When it gets late, Jack turns down the radio so he can get some peace and quiet. He likes overnight drives, especially when the roads clear off and he can be alone with his racing thoughts. Bitty must know he needs a break, because he doesn’t argue. Instead, he pulls up a leg so he can rest his chin on his knee.

The night above them is stretched high and dark, stars blurring in and out of clarity depending on the quality and quantity of the streetlights, and the dark scenery whirring past him too fast to look at.

These kinds of drives are always nice, but it’s different with a quiet Bitty beside him, looking so soft and sleepy, and somehow serious.

“Were you looking for me, this morning?” he says, after a long time of letting Jack alone with his thoughts.

“Yeah.” 

“Why?”

“...”

“Jack?”

“Shitty.”

“What?”

“He just … he said you were sulking.”

“That little miscreant. First he insulted my pies, and then he...”

Jack knows what came next, because Shitty had crawled into his bed the next morning to talk to him, like he does sometimes when his nine am is cancelled. Jack had half-listened, because that’s all Shitty really wants, and then he’d realized he was talking about Bitty and he’d started this whole mess.

The fact that Bitty doesn’t say it piques his interest, but he doesn’t press. Instead, he gives Bitty an out, pulling a face. “I can’t imagine he insulted your pies.”

“Oh Bits,” Bitty says, affecting a voice that sounds nothing like Shitty, and pretending to hold a fork to his mouth. “Grapefruit juice in the key-lime pie,” he says, now gesturing with the imaginary fork. “Coconut in the crust. This is getting really fancy. Mmmm. But you added something else… Now, you know I would never undermind you in the kitchen Bits, but you may have overdone it on the southern twink tears.”

Jack huffs out a laugh. “He did call wednesday’s experiments  _ sadness pies. _ ”

“He should have said  _ sadness pies, _ ” Bitty says, sounding exasperated. “I had to wrangle his dumb speech for ten minutes to get it under 140.”

*

They pull into the Bittles driveway in the ambiguous hours between  _ late  _ and  _ early,  _ and Jack is just about read to pass the fuck out.

Bitty took the last driving shift so he could pull off into his own familiar territory. They’ve both assured each other for hours that it would be okay for the other to doze while they drive, but neither of them have had any measure of sleep.

It’s saturday morning, and back at Samwell, Jack would be getting up soon to get some time alone on the ice. He likes the predawn hour, usually. Now, he mostly wants to get horizontal and curl up for a few days.

“Do you want to eat before you get a nap?” Bitty asks him in a whisper, tinkering with his house key.

Jack shakes his head no. If he’s not careful, on his next blink his eyes are just going to stay shut. He does, however, make it all the way to the bed Bitty steers him to, pointing out the bathroom on the way.

He doesn’t even turn on the light, but something hits him as he’s crumpling down onto the bed. “Am I taking your bed?” Jack asks.

Bitty shakes his head no and Jack sees him in silhouette.

“Alright,” he says, and waits for Bitty to leave the doorway to press the side of his face to the cool pillow. There is something glinting on the nightstand, long and thin and mysterious in the dark, but Jack’s an athlete, he’d recognize a trophy by scent if he had to.

“You lying little fucker,” he mumbles to himself, and bundles his arms up under his upper body in an attempt to get comfortable.

Jack doesn’t like sleeping in places that aren’t his own bed or team bus, he always has a hell of a time staying overnight in hotels, waking up in the morning without ever feeling like he’s actually made it to sleep, but when he settles in Bitty’s bed, his thoughts go quiet, and it only takes a few minutes for him to drop off. 


	3. Chapter 3

In the morning — shit, the afternoon, it’s got to be, how late did Jack even sleep, _fuck_ — Bitty is in the room, flipping through the closet. Jack opens one eye. “Bittle,” he says, voice rasping a little bit.

“Sorry, Jack!” Bitty says.

“ _Correc,_ ” he mumbles, mouth still uncoordinated with sleep.  

“What?” Bitty asks.

Jack scrubs a hand over his face. “Sorry. I mean — it’s fine. It’s, uh, your room anyway.”

“Yeah,” Bitty says, “but you’re my guest.” He redirects his attention back to his closet. “Even though you did put me in a bit of a pickle.”

“What’s wrong,” Jack says, starting to get his bearings and groping in the rumpled comforter in an attempt to find his phone.

“Well. You told me to prepare for a dinner in the city, not Easter sunday,” Bitty says. He’s frowning, and Jack can’t find his phone. Bitty notices, points at his own nightstand where by some miracle, his phone is plugged in. He assumes that has to be Bitty’s doing.

“You’re looking at your own closet,” Jack says, feeling his brows furrow without his consent, and touches one to try to put it back where it goes. He knows he can be intense, and his heavy brows don’t help a bit.

“I’ve been bulking up. The one that fits is at school.” Bitty says absently. Jack snorts, and Bitty whirls on him, a manic glint in his big eyes. “Don’t you start, Jack Zimmerman. I haven’t even _seen_ your outfit yet.”

Jack rolls his eyes. “It’s fine.”

“Let me see.”

Jack sits up, abandoning his desire to find his phone and squinting at the clock on the wall. “It’s one thirty.”

“Right,” Bitty says. He’s getting impatient now. “So if we need to get you a new outfit, we’re running out of time.”

“I’ve been to a church before, Bittle.”

“We’re southern baptists, Jack. You can’t just put on a polo.”

Which is how Jack ends up tie and sport coat shopping. On Easter Saturday.

Jack lets Bittle manhandle him, small and excited, in and out of jackets. While he steers Jack, he chatters, eyes bright. While he insists Jack try on this one and that one, he tells him about the morning he slept through, which apparently included a lot of mother and son emergency baking.

The afternoon passes in a pleasant buzz, Jack feeling well rested and Bitty working overtime in his elevated mood.

When Jack finds a coat, Bitty even tries to pay for it, wielding an _emergency credit card._

Jack has to do his best to repress a laugh at the thought, and makes a second, more impulsive purchase when Bitty wanders off to find the gents and tucks it into his pocket before he gets back.

*

This is why Jack doesn’t make impulsive decisions: eight thirty on Sunday morning arrives and he’s got a knot like a grapefruit between his shoulder blades.

“You don’t have to go,” Bitty says. He is wearing a bow tie.

“I told your mom I would.”

“Well, Jack Zimmerman, that’s not exactly a binding legal document.”

Bitty is a good host — last night Bitty had managed to both cook a significant portion of a pretty spectacular dinner and somehow act as a buffer between Jack and Mr. Bittle until they'd found common ground. He'd also given up his bed for two nights.

And it's Easter, Jack reminds himself, the whole reason they're here. He closes his eyes and gets an unwanted flash of Bitty on the ice on Friday morning, piano music too loud to hear himself think. It pangs inside of him like touching an exposed nerve.

“Of course I'm going to go,” Jack mumbles, and when Bitty’s face lights up like a cracked glow stick he knows he’s made the right decision.

*

They take Jack’s car. Partly because if they ride with Bitty's parents, the two of them will have to sit in the back seat with Bitty's little brother, who is little in title only, but also because Jack still feels tense and a rolling sense of anxiety.

His plan is to sit through the whole service, of course, but he's familiar enough with his own faulty wiring by now to know that it will help some of the distant alarm bells if he knows that he's got a worst-case scenario escape plan.

After they get situated inside, Jack has to admit that Bitty looks pretty sharp.

He’s always well-groomed in a casual way, but it’s different to see him in now, standing shoulder to shoulder with him, in navy. Jack’s eyes keep sliding to his right, unbidden. It gets — not worse, that’s not what he wants to say, but — more pronounced, definitely, when the music starts to swell.

Jack’s been to church before, mainly Christmas and Easter, but they were all quiet, somber services in québecois. He’s just a little floored by the sound and color in the room, by the push and dynamics and Bittle’s warm, mobile presence beside him.

The music is good, probably, but loud, jumping. Everyone in in pastels, suits and lacy dresses and big hats, and Bitte beside him crisp. At one point the song rises to a flooded crescendo, _oh death where is is your sting, the resurrected king,_ and Bittle, flushed pink, bounces on the balls of his feet.

Jack is a little taken aback. He’s taller than Bittle, by a significant amount, and when his eyes slide to him, he has the perfect vantage point of his cowlick.

Catching himself, he does his best to sing along with the lyrics, trying not to be self-conscious of his own low rumble, but flinching when Bittle turns to look at him. He’s not exactly subtle in his surprise, but then his attention is up front again, grinning with the far corner of his mouth like Jack won’t be able to tell.  

When the music seems to come to a logical conclusion, falling back to a single keyboard and a tall, slim woman playing minor chords, and a short, jovial man climbs to his podium and asks them to “bridge the aisles” which Jack doesn’t realizes must mean ‘hold hands with your neighbor’ until Jack takes his palm, tentative. He looks at him like he’s worried Jack might be taken aback, so he gives his hand a little squeeze to reassure him.  

His hand is small and warm in Jack’s.

Some time later, Bittle leans over to whisper, “You’re still holding my hand.”

Oh. Jack pulls back, embarrassed, wondering how long he’s been holding onto Bitty’s hand. Bitty’s big eyes are lit with amusement and a little fondness, ducking his chin into his own collar a little bit when they catch eyes.

Jack does his best to pay attention to the rest of the service, which is fine, pleasant even. It’s hard not to feel at ease with Bitty looking so happy, his hair a little ruffled from his enthusiasm during worship.  

Are you allowed to realize you love another boy in a church service?

Of course, even if they hadn’t been sitting in a church, it would still be horribly fucked-up timing. Jack is about to graduate and sign with a team in short order. He’s going to be an NHL rookie, and he isn’t — he doesn’t want to initiate something just to have Bitty be some long-distance dirty secret of his, because he isn’t ready for the media shitstorm that would follow him if he became the first out hockey player, with his history and his father; the general public already thinks he's a strung out druggie on a redemption arc they're half hoping will fail and —

Jack can feel his own panic spiraling out of control, tighter and tighter and he falls back on his years of therapy and gets a handle on his breathing, counting in and out, _eighteighteight_ and gripping the seat of his chair him to ground himself in a way he hopes doesn’t look deranged, his short nails digging into the red and grey weave of the chair.

Bitty again, reaches over towards him, puts his soft palm across Jack’s knuckles, and drags his thumb against Jack’s wrist. It’s not exactly a hold, but it’s something, and Jack’s head goes quiet.

*

Near the end, and Jack knows it is near the end of service because the pastor keeps saying _Stick with me here, I’m going to get you to lunch in a minute_ , he goes to dismiss them with le notre père, which Jack knows, but only as such.

He follows along under his breath, some of the lines meeting up imperfectly, but he doesn't think anyone noticed.

There is, however, a wincing moment at dismissal where the call is _peace be with you,_ and the answer is not, as Jack’s experience has led him to believe, _and with your spirit._  

Bitty leans over to whisper, “We’re not Catholic, Jack.” Several older ladies are looking at Bitty as if he is personally responsible. It is a very _get your boy_ look. Jack fights the urge tohide his face in his hands.

 All in all, it isn’t the worst holiday he’s ever had.

 The Bittle family Easter lunch is certainly a thing of beauty, happening in a long dining room overlooking a grassy knoll where a small army of children hunt for eggs afterwards.

 Jack is good with kids, wrangling and tending to scratched knees and they put him in charge of helping one of the extra small ones not to get trampled during the search.  

As for Bitty, they all call him Eric, except Suzanne, who calls him Dicky, so Jack follows suit. _Eric_ spent last night making dozens of desserts, even sending Jack off for more flour, because apparently a house that does not have a constant Bitty is, by default, “appallingly understocked.”

“Dicky,” Suzanne says, often, touching her own collarbone. She’s so fucking happy to have him home, Jack isn’t even regretting the long road back to Samwell, and the underslept practice he’s going to have in the morning. She’s glad for Jack, too, and she keeps sweeping him into fresh hugs to tell him that.

Mr. Bittle tells him, too. “Always nice to meet a friend of Eric’s,” he says, clapping Jack on the shoulder. “And to have him home for the holidays.”

“It was my pleasure, sir,” Jack says, finding that he means it. Bitty, across the room is clearing plates. Jack is in the habit of finding him in a hustle on ice; it feels natural here, too.

They can’t stay long. It’s a more than a half-day’s drive home. Suzanne packs them a literal wicker basket full of tupperware for the road.

“What are we going to do with a hundred hardboiled eggs,” Jack wants to know. “And watercress sandwiches? And _three_ peach pies?”

“Well,” Bitty says, getting comfortable in Jack’s driver’s seat, pulling his seat forward a few inches and adjusting the mirror. “They’re important for the hunt, but you know the kids aren't going to actually eat them so I told my mama that the team would. And Honey Peach is Ransom’s favorite.”  

“Playing favorites,” Jack drawls, raising a teasing eyebrow.

Bitty gives him a playful shove. “You know I make those maple Apple pies the most, Jack Zimmerman.”

Bitty immediately goes quiet after that, fidgety, and Jack realizes what he thinks he's inadvertently revealed. It's not like it’s — it's not like he doesn't know.

Jack swallows hard, against his own anxiety and exhaustion. “You're my favorite, too, Bittle,” he says.

Afternoon sunlight slanting through the windshield paints Bitty in gold, but happiness does something uniquely luminous to him. “I knew it,” he says.

Jack reaches for Bitty’s iPod to do something with his hands.

“Playlist,” Bitty says.

“You mean so we don't get accidentally treated to the music styling of Eric Bittle?” Jack teases.

“No,” Bitty says, ears pink. “But I made one.”

Jack finds it, scrolls past _pre game_ and _post game_ and _dancing queen_ and _zombies run november_ and _Coldplay covers by country artists_ which is weirdly specific and somehow still sounds interesting, to _easter rt._

The first song on the list is _Georgia on my Mind._  

Jack loves this song. Bitty knows that, he has to, because he's thoughtful like that. He catalogs things. And it sounds different, a little new, like he's hearing it for the first time. Bitty's hand is on the gear shift, it would be a simple enough thing to take it, and he’s inadvertently held Bitty’s hand twice today.

Samwell is a thousand miles north; Jack has time. He tips his head back, and sings along. _Just an old sweet song, keeps Georgia on my mind._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys, this fic is literally just a "Jack and Bitty go to church together" fic. I didn't expect it to actually get any attention when I posted it, or I would have put a note in the first chapter about how self-indulgent it is. I was at church on Easter and I thought, I hope Bitty's happy. And, er. Here we are.
> 
> Anways, I don't _feel_ done with this verse, exactly, but historically, I've never written a sequel. So I just want you guys to know a few things about this verse that happen in my head:  
>  \- The road trip home is exhausting, but also something they remember fondly for _years_ , and they make it again before Bitty is done with school.  
> \- Mama Bittle is a strong advocate for marriage equality because she doesn't think it's a-ok that people want to demand Dicky participate in "lifelong fornication."  
> \- When they're ready to start a family, (or maybe a little before) it comes in the form of one of the unmarried teenage girls in the Bittle's small group.  
> \- Bitty gets to do more figure skating. I just... that one's important to me. ;)
> 
> Also many many thanks toSevenimpossiblethings, without whom this fic would not exist.


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